My personal blog for thoughts on DnD and other tabletop RPGs.
I also have a YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/BrunosGeekReviews )

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

'Dread' RPG Review

You know how every time a rules-light RPG comes out there’s always
someone clamoring that the game in question is finally the perfect game
to introduce newcomers to role-playing games? Yeah well, this is me
clamoring that ‘Dread’ IS the perfect RPG game to introduce someone to
tabletop RPGs! Or the perfect ‘system’ (apostrophes explained in a
moment) to run a game when you have the story planned out in your mind
but haven’t had time to come up with/write some stats.
The game was designed for horror games in mind and while I think
it’s the most fitting genre for it, nothing should stop someone from
trying another genre as long as the characters are in some sort of
danger, physical or otherwise. (And is there an RPG where characters
aren’t?)
There are character sheets but they’re completely devoid of stats.
Instead, the GM will ask the players some questions about their
characters which the players have to answer. Some of them can actually
impose some facets into the characters’ backgrounds! Example from the
book: “What are you recovering from and why do you think it’s taking so
long?” These questions can sometimes make someone slightly uncomfortable
because they might have to go places they usually wouldn’t when
thinking about their characters. The question from the example is
obviously something negative that’s happened to them, however the player
can take it from there and decide what it is. This way of doing things
is actually amazing! As soon as the game starts, my two players already
had a really good idea of who their characters were, didn’t hesitate in
their characterization and seemed to already care about what would
happen to them because during the ‘questions’ process they had thought
about who these characters were. They had imagined them
as people, what they feared and what gave them hope, and that had made
them care about their fate. I have rarely seen players inhabit their
roles so quickly in a RPG!
O.k, so about the ‘system’… It’s not really a game system as much
as a set of rules to guide a story. First of all, say good-bye to your
dice. ‘Dread’ is played with a ‘Jenga’ set! You read that right! The
rules make for incredibly fast-paced and incredibly stressful game
sessions! Basically, if your character could logically do something, he
simply does it. If there’s no logical way he could, then he doesn’t.
Simple. In the moments when there is doubt though, that’s when you pull a
block! (Or more if the task at hand is difficult!) If the tower topples
over, the character is removed from the game and the tower is reset.
Players can sometimes choose not to pull the block and deal with minor
consequences instead, but not always. For example, if a character has to
jump from one building roof to another and the player decides not to
pull a block. The GM could determine that the character simply changes
his mind and doesn’t attempt the jump. Or if he was being chased by a
monster and had no choice but to jump, then he jumped but failed to
reach the other building, fell down on the fire escape and twisted an
ankle. A lot is left on the shoulders of the GM because the nature of
the game is extremely narrative.
Other reviewers have claimed that while this is an excellent game
(Which I completely agree with!) it would be difficult to run a
long-running story with it because the mortality rate of the characters
is supposedly too high, given that as soon as the tower topples, a
character is removed from the game. I can see where that point of view
comes from but respectfully disagree. The book clearly states that a
character being removed from the game isn’t necessarily a dead
character. Of course in some cases it couldn’t be anything else. If the
character pulls a block to see if they escape from the serial killer and
they topple over the tower, the obvious consequence is that the serial
killer caught up with them and killed them. But in other cases, toppling
the tower can be something else. If the character is in no direct
danger, two things can happen. The first is that the character can find
himself a ‘ghost’, in that they can no longer pull blocks and directly
affect the story, the character is going to die soon and the player
knows it but they can still play their role until that comes to happen.
Or as a second option, the character could be removed from the game in
any other way available. Maybe they go insane from all the horrors
they’ve seen and are sent to an asylum. Maybe a family member is in the
hospital and they need to be there for them. Many ways to remove a
character from the current game can allow for them to come back another
time. I completely agree that it might be trickier to run a long-running game with this system, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.I
think that avoiding unnecessary block-pulling will already go a long
way if you want the characters to survive for many game sessions.
The book also comes with lots of advice on running a horror game
and gives you three example scenarios. One is a werewolf story, the
other a sci-fi horror scenario and the third is in the splatterpunk
genre. I have only browsed through those at the moment so I can’t
review the adventures in themselves, but even if you don’t use them they
seem to me like solid examples of how to run a ‘Dread’ game.
So how efficient is this game for horror and how easy is it to
play? I bought the book the very same day I ran our first game with it. I
was going to read it but fell asleep on my couch and woke up when my
friends came over. I quickly read the rules on the spot during the time
it took for a ‘Magic: The Gathering’ game between my two players and I was ready to run thegame! It is that easy to use!
The game I ran was a sci-fi horror game. Ironically the idea didn’t
even come to me because of the scenario given in the book, I’d
genuinely been wanting to run one for a while now and the game presented
the perfect opportunity to do so. I had an idea in mind and I was ready
to go. I think that alone will make me run a lot of ‘Dread’ games in
the future, the fact that all you need to run a game is the idea, you
don’t need to waste time doing ‘homework’ to prepare it as far as
statistics go.
The use of ‘Jenga’ to resolve actions is genius, as the players
will feel the titular dread when it’s time to pull a block or two. I was
even more impressed when during the game session the players agreed
that one action in particular should be much more easy for one of the
characters and found myself going along with it, making the older
character pull two blocks instead of one for the physical task they had
to accomplish.
Oh and a last detail that I found somewhat funny? In a way, the
game does encourage the ‘Let’s split up’ horror movie trope! If there’s a
dangerous area to explore that will necessitate block pulling to reach,
players might not want to start pulling more blocks than necessary from
the tower. Good players won’t metagame too much (and in fact mine
didn’t) but I think it might affect games at least on a subconscious
level.
So to conclude, this might be the greatest horror RPG I’ve ever
played. Maybe I’m still in the ‘honeymoon’ phase because I just got it
yesterday and the game ran smoothly but that’s how it seems to me right
now. And while I haven’t tried that yet, I think this might be the
perfect game to bring non-RPG players into RPGs. I highly recommend it.